Category Archives: a Jesus kind of love
Suffering, a Chance to Love God as God Loves Us
I want to share what I have recognized late in life about suffering. I think there is much more to understand about it, but this aspect helped me.
God/Jesus loves us unconditionally. He hurts for us when we make mistakes and have to take the consequences so we won’t keep on making them. He hurts with us when others harm us and he hurts with those we harm and he hurts for those who harm us also. He’s in this duck soup of life even more vulnerable than any of us. Jesus told us that whatever we do to others, we do to him. Yet he never stops loving any of us.
Life is about learning to love as Jesus showed us God loves, unconditionally. That means our self, our neighbor, our enemy, and God who is in control, but lets us and those we love suffer. Why?
Because that is learning to love like God loves. That is true love above and beyond the ordinary garden variety we call love in our societies.
Life is a spiritual journey of taking a leap of FAITH, of growing in faith until we can trust (which is HOPE). And with grace (the Love of God) hope can become LOVE with no small print, expectations or exceptions. I think that is the whole point of our human journey.
Two small experiences I’ve had illustrate some of the reasons I believe this:
Many years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible stabbing pain in my eye. There was no ophthalmologist in Dickson then and Julian was just recovering from the flu. So I lay down on the couch in the living room, hoping to be able to hold out until morning to wake Julian to drive me to Nashville. As I lay there struggling to bear the pain, I remembered about praising God even in times of suffering. I decided at least this way, God would get praise, so I began through gritted teeth to praise God. After a few minutes of praising God each time the pain hit, I had a very vivid sense of a presence in the room over by the window. I began to experience an awesome feeling of being tenderly and totally loved. I soon was overcome by joy even though I still was feeling the stabbing pain. Continuing to praise with joy, I finally fell asleep. When I awoke at dawn, the pain was gone and never returned.
Now, I have been in physical pain plenty of times since then and praising has not taken it away. But now, I know that God is with me in it. I am not alone.
I have been pretty insecure most of my life. Emotional pain can wipe me out as much as physical. In my fifties I was in a wheelchair from a painful condition on the soles of my feet and palms of my hands. But one of my sons worked for an airline and as his parents, we could fly free even to Europe. So, I traveled in a wheel chair to countries that not only weren’t handicapped accessible, but where the handicapped were even kept out of sight in attics. In one, it was raining and Julian was trying to get the wheelchair and me out of the street onto a covered sidewalk. Three middle-aged local women were chatting and blocking us from getting out of the rain. They saw our problem, but not only didn’t move, but when we had to go past them out in the street, they literally hissed at me! I was shocked. Why would people hate me when they didn’t even know me? I wasn’t used to being the victim of prejudice and I was very depressed that night. The next morning when we toured a very crowded Cathedral, Steve wanted to climb to the top of the dome and Julian wanted to take photos of all the gold and silver and even semi-precious stones in the walls. So, we finally found an empty dark corner to get me out of the way while they did their thing. They were gone a long time and I began to get more depressed and to feel sorry for myself. I could see the beautiful carved marble altar, but though Jesus on the Cross is usually on the wall above the gold tabernacle, he wasn’t there. I began to look for him and finally thought to look up behind me and there he was on the cross. We were alone together in the dark empty corner. Once again, I had that sense of his presence and even his understanding of my feeling of rejection. I realized then that we are not alone even in our feelings. Jesus not only suffered for us, he suffers with us. He is God with us in our humanity with all its joys and sorrows.
This was over thirty years ago, so those countries may have changed. But on that trip we ran into obvious prejudice several times. And again, I don’t have that same sense of his presence in similar situations, but I know he is with me. And it makes a difference. I can praise him with faith and trust and with love.
What Does the Lord Require of Us?
Some new insights from our sermon today.
Today had one of my favorite scriptures from Micah 6:8. “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
It was paired with the scripture Matthew 9: 10-13; ” As he (Jesus) sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.’ “
Now, the tax collectors were hated for several reasons, 1: they were working for Rome taking money from the oppressed Jews. 2. And they also enriched themselves by overcharging their own people.
So, these guys were double trouble, getting rich at the expense of their own people and supporting a government that oppressed them. Yet, Jesus hung out with them.
Would a modern equivalent be Jesus hobnobbing with Elon Musk and all the Billionaires who don’t pay taxes? That makes me uncomfortable.
I spent Covid quarantine struggling to understand the Trump devotees, which has helped me move away from judging and hating……though I still have to continue working on my attitude. But as much as I’d like to feel secure financially, I have a really hard time thinking I’d hang on to billions while people struggle to keep body and soul together working two jobs. But since I’ve never had the option or the experience of having earned that much through my own talents, intelligence, and hard work, maybe I can’t really get into that mind set. Obviously, I still have challenges in the “judge not” department.
But if Jesus doesn’t judge and when dying prayed, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” why do I think I can?
Over the years I have sincerely tried to do justice and as I struggled through the years, I tried to love kindness………..admittedly with some failures. But, old age is a whole other challenge…..”Walking humbly with my God” means being like a small child holding a parent’s hand facing four lanes of speeding traffic. As we lose our beloved mates, watch our grown children struggle, are forgotten by the grandchildren we spent so much time with and love on, and become invisible to a younger stronger more attractive population, our bodies and minds betray us. We actually become those dependent children again, rather than the parent protecting our children. Because of what we’ve experienced and what we now know about the vagaries of life and even about ourselves, old age is humiliating, frightening, and painful. This truly is like being a small child again and having to hold onto God’s hand and trust like a child in the Ukraine.
Pray daily for us old guys………nothing quite prepared us for this.
Our Shared Values
Interfaith leader Eboo Patel founded the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), which brings together youth of different faiths through cooperation and shared service. When a skeptical questioner asks, “What’s the IFYC approach?” Patel explains:
“We call it shared values—service learning,” I said. “We begin by identifying the values that different religious communities hold in common—hospitality, cooperation, compassion, mercy. We bring a group of religiously diverse young people together and ask them, ‘How does your religion speak to this value?’ One kid will say, ‘Well, I really admire how the pope [John Paul II] embodied mercy when he forgave the man who tried to assassinate him.’ A kid from a different religion will say, ‘There is a story like that in my religion: when the Prophet Muhammad returned to Mecca, he extended mercy by forgiving many of the people who had waged war against him.’” . . .
“Are you trying to teach the kids that all religions are the same?” he asked, again growing suspicious.
“Not at all,” I responded. “We are showing young people that religions have powerful things in common, but they come to those shared values through their own paths. . . .”
“The IFYC always gives young people the chance to actually act on the religious value they are talking about through a service project. It’s amazing how many faith stories of compassion kids remember when they are building a house together for a poor family, or what their insights into hospitality are when they are tutoring refugee children.” [1]
CAC teacher Brian McLaren writes about the sense of “with-ness” that arises when people of different faiths join in service, justice, and solidarity:
Another friend . . . went to a Muslim-majority country specifically to convert Muslims to Christianity. After some time there, he got a sick feeling: he felt he was serving neither God nor the best interests of the people around him, but was instead serving the colonizing agenda of the religious clan that sent him. So he changed the direction of his work. He started mobilizing Christians and Muslims to work side by side in helping the poor. “Something happens,” he told me, “when we work together for the poor. We all change. I know that both the Christians and the Muslims feel they are encountering God in one another, and together we are encountering God as we join God in serving the poor.” He discovered that witness led him to with-ness. . . .
Talking together is important—but that interfaith dialogue becomes much deeper in the context of multi-faith collaboration. Words are good, but actions are better—especially actions that bring us together solving problems that affect everybody. . . . [What] so many other people are doing is a lot like what Jesus did: bringing together unlikely people to serve and heal together, to liberate the oppressed and their oppressors together, and to model, in their collaboration, the kind of harmony and human-kindness the world so desperately needs. [2]
Universal Grace
Learning to Love
As a Christian, I have been freed by recognizing the journey of Jesus from a twelve-year-old, who was oblivious to hurting his parents, growing into the one who on the cross loved enough to pray, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” His human growth in wisdom and holiness is our WAY also for growing from need to Love. So, for me, Jesus is my go-to for the details. But I have learned from other religions and recognized that those that started them knew that we are literally all one somehow. What we do to one, we do to all. It’s that simple and that challenging. I grew up Catholic and though I am now Presbyterian because, though I am a woman, I felt called to preach about Jesus as God’s expression of Love for us all. But Richard Rohr and Henri Nouwen, both Catholic priests, are still my two go-to guys for wisdom about love. Ann Lamott, who I think is Presbyterian, is my go-to girl for honestly living out loud, the partners’ dance of our humanity and grace.
Here’s Richard’s take on God alive and well in all the world’s religions in spite of our unfinished humanity.
Learning from Others
If something is true, no matter who said it, it is always from the Holy Spirit. —Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate
Father Richard reflects on how his commitment to Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have continually helped him recognize God in other traditions:
In my own life, going deep in the Christian religion of my birth has enabled me to see the same Spirit and Love in other religions as well. It’s been quite a journey from growing up in a Catholic “ghetto” in Kansas, and hardly even knowing any Protestants. And yet, at age fourteen, I was sent to study with the Franciscans in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they gave me a very ecumenical theological education.
One of the best courses I had was on the Hebrew Scriptures, which gave me a great love for Judaism. It’s probably why I emphasize the prophets so much, because I realized the prophets really weren’t about what we call today retributive justice. They were about restorative justice. When we stay with their message, there will be these magnificent passages toward the end of their books that invariably point toward love. God eventually says through the prophets: “I’m going to love you anyway. I’m going to redeem you by my perfect love. I’m going to love you into wholeness” (see Isaiah 29:13–24 and Hosea 6:1–6).
In 1969, when I was sent as a deacon to the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, I had only a basic introduction to Indigenous religions. I observed how mothers in the pueblo would show their children how to silently wave the morning sunshine toward their faces, just as we learn to “bless” ourselves with the sign of the cross. Indigenous peoples here had contemplative prayer long before we Franciscans ever appeared.
The rediscovery of Christian contemplation opened my eyes to Buddhists and Sufis—their teachings and practitioners. Buddhism taught me the phenomenology of perception—what’s going on in our brains. Every world religion at the mature levels discovers some forms of practice to free us from our addictive mind, which we take as normal. Starting in the 1960s, our increased interaction with Eastern religions in general, and Buddhism in particular, helped us recognize and rediscover our own very ancient Christian contemplative tradition. The Sufis’ deep love of mysticism, especially as expressed by their poets Rumi and Hafiz, often captures the stirrings of my own heart.
My latest discovery was really Hinduism, which is considered the oldest world religion. In the early 1980s, I gave a retreat in Nepal; between talks I would just walk the old streets and walk into temples and try to remain invisible. I remember these lovely Indian women coming in wearing saris, so gracefully, and paying no attention to anything else except maybe the flame or the oil they were holding. With what reverence they would bow! What do we think they’re bowing to except God, the Mystery?
Interfaith Friendships
Only Love Is Absolute
This week’s Daily Meditations explore the fruitfulness of interfaith friendships. We begin with Father Richard Rohr reflecting on Jesus’ inclusivity, which has allowed Richard both to affirm and critique his own religious tradition—and invites us to do the same.
In no other period of history have humans had such easy and immediate access to people of other cultures and other religions, often as friends. Once a person has developed any “discernment of the Spirit” it becomes clear that God’s holiness exists all over the place.
The Second Vatican Council gave Catholics some fine official guidelines and freedoms. Nostra Aetate, the 1965 Catholic document on non-Christian religions affirms, “For all peoples comprise a single community, and have a single origin . . . one also is their final goal: God. [God’s] providence, manifestations of goodness, and saving designs extend to all [people].” [1] Such an affirmation rightly places us all inside the same frame of history and allows no foundational distinction between us. We are clearly from the one God, tending toward the one God, and as the mystics of all religions teach, Reality itself is one.
It is strange that it took us almost all of our two-thousand-year history to get back to the “ecumenical” attitude Jesus had at the very beginning! He goes out of his way to make non-Jews the heroes of many of his stories and teachings. He is quick to point out the failures and fallacies of his own religion, Judaism, while still remaining faithful to it. Jesus held a very critical stance toward his own religion, but for some reason few of us think we can do the same.
On the other hand, sadly, many people think that if they no longer believe in the absolute primacy of their own religion, then it has no absolute call on them and they often give up on it entirely. But I am convinced that the biblical tradition is saying that the only absolute available to us is the faithful love of God, and not any concept or structure—even our religious traditions themselves. God’s love itself is the center and the still point of the turning world. But if we have never actually experienced this love, we will most assuredly look for absolutes in other ways.
What is unique about Jesus is his inclusivity itself! He is so grounded in the absoluteness of the Divine relationship that he is quite free to relativize the Law, simplify the Prophets, and find God outside of his own tradition. He is constantly and consistently inclusive—without denying his Jewish foundation and faith. I believe we can only be inclusive when we have a deeply held and shared experience that we can include people “into.” We have to have a “home” to bring people home to.
What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.
Eileen’s Reflections on this.
When seeking God, I explored most Christian denominations and some other world religions. I realized no one has all the truth and nothing but the truth, because that would make them equal to God. After experiencing the Love of God expressed in Jesus outside any religion, I studied scripture and prayed with women from most of the major Christian denominations. We didn’t have conflicts, because our focus was on seeking grace to become more loving. I’ve been on lay witness teams or given witness talks for Methodist, Presbyterian USA, Catholic, Episcopalian and Baptist churches. God is alive in all of them and some people in each “get” that kind of all encompassing love of God. I have experienced that “oneness” with everything and everyone several times. We really are one and everything we do or is done to us effects all, those we love and those we don’t. It changes everything to know that. It’s not easy to love our enemies, but that’s the heart of all religions’ beginnings, before we let our fears control us. And for Christians, Jesus personifies that love for all, even those that betrayed him and those that killed him. Whether we like it or not, this is what Jesus is about. And if we call ourselves Christians, it’s what we are called to keep seeking the grace to do.
Hospitality of the Heart
Richard Rohr understands justice as loving solidarity with those who suffer:
“We must not separate ourselves from the suffering of the world. When we’re close to those in pain, their need evokes love in us. Very few of us have the largess, the magnanimity to just decide to be loving. Someone has to ask it of us. We have to place ourselves in situations with people who are not like us, outside our systems of success and security, so we can read life from another perspective. The needs we witness will pull us toward love, toward generosity and compassion.
I think the icon of the cross does this on a spiritual level. The bleeding body pulls us into itself and into bleeding humanity, too. I experience this pull when watching the news, witnessing the suffering of people all over the world. I realize much of the broadcast is superficial and even biased, but it takes me out of the protective bubble of my little hermitage where I can live far too peacefully and comfortably. It makes me more aware that right now there is a woman in Syria or Ukraine carrying her baby and running for her life. I must take that in and be in solidarity with her in whatever ways I can, witnessing what she is going through: the anxiety, the pain, the fear. That’s what teaches us how to love. That is the pain we must allow to transform us and inspire us to act somehow.
All of us are called to the work of justice, which will look different for many people. My primary work is to send prayer and love toward those who are hurting. I do believe consciousness is the deepest level of reality. I also use my voice, through my teaching and writing, to awaken others to the reality of suffering and injustice in the world.”
The Gift of Covid
“If it is true that solitude diverts us from our fear and anger and makes us empty for a relationship with God, then it is also true that our emptiness provides a very large and sacred space where we can welcome all the people of the world. There is a powerful connection between our emptiness and our ability to welcome. When we give up what sets us apart from others— not just property but also opinions, prejudices, judgments, and mental preoccupations—then we have room within to welcome friends as well as enemies.” Henri Nouwen
This resonates with my experience of Covid’s quarantine. During that time alone is when I began to understand those I disagree with. Memories of life experiences, of studying and working with the Myers/Briggs Type Indicator in the past, and of people I love who are different from me all came together when seeking God and the grace to understand our broken world. Eileen
Earthen Vessels
Accepting Our Imperfections
Richard Rohr shares how the teachings of Thérèse of Lisieux have supported his own spiritual journey:
French Catholicism in Thérèse’s time emphasized an ideal of human perfection, but Thérèse humbly trusted her own experience and taught the spirituality of imperfection instead. Thérèse is one of my favorite saints, perhaps because I’m an Enneagram Type One. The trap for the One is self-created perfectionism, which makes us dissatisfied and disappointed by nearly everything, starting with ourselves.
Thérèse has helped me to embrace imperfection—my own and others. When her sister Céline was upset with her own faults, Thérèse instructed, “If you want to bear in peace the trial of not pleasing yourself, you will give [the Virgin Mary] a sweet home.” [1] If we pay attention even for an hour, we observe how hard it is to be “displeasing” to ourselves! Often, this is the emotional snag that sends us into terribly bad moods without even realizing the origins of these moods. To resolve this problem, Thérèse teaches us to let go of the very need to “think well of yourself” to begin with! That’s our ego talking, not God.
Worthiness is not the issue; the issue is trust and surrender. As Thérèse understood, “Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.” [2] Let’s resolve this once and for all: You’re not worthy! None of us are. Don’t even go down that worthiness road. It’s a game of denial and pretend. We’re all saved by grace. We’re all being loved in spite of ourselves. That’s why I can also say, “You’re all worthy!” But your worthiness has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the goodness of God.
Brené Brown, a contemporary teacher who extols the gifts of imperfection, writes:
It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection. . . .
When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness—the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. . . .
There is a line from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” that serves as a reminder to me when . . . I’m trying to control everything and make it perfect. The line is, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” [3] . . . This line helps me remember the beauty of the cracks (and the messy house and the imperfect manuscript and the too-tight jeans). It reminds me that our imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together. Imperfectly, but together. [4]
Living with a Grail Experience
by Richard Rohr
(Eileen: This captures the effects of my own experience. At the age of thirty, I recognized and admitted with great shame to others in a counseling group that I was incapable of loving anyone, even my wonderful loving husband and my five young children. When they tenderly accepted me without judgement, it began tp free me of my self hate and it opened my heart to a healing experience of the presence of Jesus as the expression of the unconditional love of God for me and all others.)
A powerful spiritual experience challenges us, like Parsifal in his quest for the Grail, to find a way of holding the paradox of living in the everyday world while knowing there is something beyond it. Richard explains:
Once the Grail experience is over for Parsifal, he finds himself back in the forest, back in the world as he knows it. He has been touched by God in such a way that only God will do for him from now on. He has experienced the Absolute, and the relative will never again totally satisfy him. He aches for God, and the aching now becomes the seeking.
After our own Grail experience, our lives are characterized by some measure of perpetual dissatisfaction. Nothing lives up to our standards: not the church, not ourselves, not our country. There is a radical, aching longing: Ordinary life will never again be good enough, yet it is not meaningless either.
After the Grail experience, the ordinary forever becomes extraordinary. God is both perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in everything. Once a paper cup becomes a Grail, even if it looks like a paper cup to everyone else, we know it’s also a golden cup. What frustrates us is that we can’t tell anybody. They all think it’s just paper!
A peak experience can be disconcerting. Sometimes we might even be ungrateful for it. We don’t fit in anymore. We live the rest of our lives at a tilt, wandering like Parsifal. We might feel a bit off-center. We can’t get excited about things most people get excited about. We just don’t believe they’re important anymore.
Life’s not about being perfect. It’s about getting involved in this great wrestling match. We get wounded in the hip, like Jacob (Genesis 32:26), and we limp the rest of our lives, but we’re not worried about the wound. We’re utterly confused, but we’re not confused by our confusion. We can live with our confusion now because, behind it all, we know.
Does that sound like double-talk? When one gets into Grail language, it’s all paradox. Everyone wants to pull us back to the first language of logic, law, and ego-tower building. But we can’t go anywhere with that. We have jumped off the ego tower. Once Parsifal has seen the Grail—even though he returns to the world—he is radically different ever after.
Once we have experienced the Grail—our soul, our True Self, God-in-us—we still fall short. We betray others and ourselves. We fail to live our own truth. We act contrary to our values and beliefs. We are hypocritical, lazy, lustful, and all the rest. But we are also trapped in the truth. As Jeremiah says, it burns within us (20:9). We know it’s the truth, even though we can never live up to it. Henceforward the only sin would be to deny that it is the truth. Trying to live up to it is the rest of the Grail journey.
Now the quest is real because the Grail is real. God is real.
